


Emotion - Guilty

by f_imaginings



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, emotion prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:22:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_imaginings/pseuds/f_imaginings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of a set of Emotion prompts for a drabble writing exercise. A hypothetical murder leads John Luther to question his best friend and pocket sociopath Alice Morgan. Alice contemplates feelings of love and guilt and how they apply to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emotion - Guilty

“I need you to tell me,” John Luther rubbed his forehead, his voice just a shade shy of frustration. Alice made it hard for him to keep his cool. “Were you involved?”

Alice ran the nail of her pointer finger along her bottom lip, pensive. “It wouldn’t at all inconvenience you if that man were out of the picture, though, would it?”

Luther slapped his hand on the table, tired of this game. It seemed like everything was a game to Alice. “Alice, you cannot involve yourself in this. Already it puts me over a barrel, if anyone finds out about your involvement, they’ll piece it back to me. If I go through another inquiry they’ll fire me.”

As always his voice rounded off loud. These conversations they have seem to culminate to shouting more and more often. John didn’t enjoy it, he didn’t enjoy yelling at Alice. He far preferred their civil discussions, their chats over coffee about the world, and morality, and love – discussions where he wasn’t put in a tenuous position thanks to his friendship with a sociopath.

“You’ve been meaning to quit your job anyway. You’ve told me you’re leaving. What does one more inquiry do to stop that?” Alice leaned across the desk, covering his large hand with her own slim one. Her voice lowered, became more fervent. “I could have us out of the country by tomorrow. Mexico, John. Us, the desert, searing heat and a caravan. Don’t let these petty grievances anchor you here.”

“P- hah - Petty?” Luther pulled his hand out from under hers, and pushed away from the table, standing up and pacing now. “Alice, a man is dead. He’s dead, and I definitely don’t want to hear that he’s dead because of you. You cannot do this to me.”

“Have you heard it yet?” Alice glared up at John, still seated at the table. “There is nothing tying this man’s death to you, or to me. There are absolutely no circumstances wherein his death can be pinned upon you, and you’re telling me this is a bad thing?”

“I need your answer. Answer the question. Were you involved?”

Alice sucked in a breath, facetiously, and pouted. “Oh John, you think so poorly of me?”

“Were you involved?”

“Will you charge me? If I implicate myself? Will you put me back in prison?” Alice idly rubbed her forearm, perhaps subconsciously, highlighting the place where her wrist was once bandaged. “That would make it twice that I did that for you. That sounds like very poor payback to me.”

John rubbed his forehead, covered his face with both of his hands, and paced away, facing the wall now. “No, no no.” He banged his hands loudly against the wall, with a violence that had Alice sitting up a little taller in her seat. “You did not do this to me.”

“Oh relax John.” Alice huffed out a breath, and sprawled her torso across the desk. “I didn’t kill anyone. Forgive me for being pragmatic.”

When she scoffed, he turned around. Catching her eye, assessing her, as he would do any other criminal, he paced back to the desk, and pulled out his chair, sitting back down slowly.

“You didn’t kill him then? You’re telling the truth.”

Alice looked at him in all seriousness, the mischief lighting her eyes in their previous playful banter dull now. “What would I have to gain from lying to you, John, of all people?”

He held her gaze for a very long time, wavering. Should he trust her?

“I just want you to come away with me! Morocco, the Maldives, Malaysia! There’s nothing keeping you here anymore John. Not your wife, not your job, not anything. No more obligation, no more leverage, no more office leeches, slowly eating you alive. This is perhaps the most convenient time, and you’re letting a dead man hold you back.”

He looked sad, saddened, when Alice mentioned Zoe. He rubbed his mouth, tired.

“You’re right. You’re right. I’ve got nothing for me here now.”

Alice seemed to writhe in her seat with potential swaying power. John and her were meant to travel, meant to broaden their horizons. They were simpatico, connected, aligned. They had a powerful and frightening chemistry, and Alice did things for John that he couldn’t do himself, did things for him because she wanted to, because she could.

“So? Mauritius?” Her smile was coy, and the light was back in her eyes again.

“I’ll think about it, yeah?” Luther pushed away from the table and stood, before walking towards the door. “I’ll think about it.”

“Be sure that you do.” Alice simmered, as she watched him walk out the door.

Later, she wasn’t quite sure which part of her felt compromised. That she had lied not for personal gain, or that she had lied to John. It was a fractious feeling, and she sat up, another night of barely sleeping, tapping a pen to her lips as she browsed the travel section of the newspaper. John would ask her if it was guilt she was feeling. She’d never felt guilt before. Not for murdering her parents, not for murdering Ian. Not even for murdering her dog.

It made her uncomfortable, made her insides twist. To know that some small part of her felt guilty for lying to John.

Was it the part of her that knew love?


End file.
